


Southbound

by amycarey



Category: Once Upon a Time (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-03-23
Updated: 2015-03-23
Packaged: 2018-03-19 06:03:50
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,231
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3599130
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/amycarey/pseuds/amycarey
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>“You will be beautiful one day,” the queen replies and she raises a hand to cup Gretel’s cheek, her thumb stroking along her jaw. “You will be beautiful and your brother handsome and you shall strike fear and admiration in the hearts of all you meet.”</i>
  <br/>
  <i>Gretel smiles. “Even you?”</i>
  <br/>
  <i>The queen laughs. “Even me, child.”</i>
  <br/>
  <i>Good, Gretel thinks.</i>
</p><p>What if Gretel accepted the evil queen’s offer of a home with her in the castle? An Alternate Universe story, starting with ‘True North’ and going from there.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Southbound

**Author's Note:**

> Big thanks to Karen who pestered me with the original idea for this until it wouldn’t leave me alone and Onella who read it for me and gave me feedback. Some dialogue taken from 'True North', 'The Cricket Game', and 'Queen of Hearts'.

“You were left alone in the woods. You deserve better than a father who would abandon you,” the queen says. There’s an edge of danger to her voice, despite her more subdued appearance, but then Gretel supposes that anything looks subdued when it doesn’t involve a puff of curls, a leather capelet and a too small hat.

 

“But he’s all we have,” Hansel says, a sob in his voice, and Gretel wants to kick her brother because he’s so weak, so very weak, and the queen wants them to be weak. She wants them to be desperate.

 

“Perhaps he doesn’t have to be,” the queen says.

 

“What do you mean?” Gretel asks. Father always taught them to examine the fine print, to ask questions, and Gretel took his lessons on board.

 

“You and your brother have impressed me. You aren’t the first boy and girl I’ve sent into that sticky sweet house. But you are the first to emerge. And as a reward I’ve decided to invite the two of you to live with me… here.” The queen performs an odd sort of bow, like she’s putting on a show and this is the final act, the denouement where all their hopes are fulfilled. The happy ending.

 

“You mean that we get to live in the castle?” Hansel sounds eager almost, looking at the luxuries around them.

 

“Yes. You would have your own rooms of course. Personal carriages, valets too. All of your dreams could come true.”

 

Gretel assesses the situation. “You say our father abandoned us?” she asks, hand clutching the broken compass.

 

“Would I lie, dear?” the queen asks.

 

“And _you_ won’t ever abandon us?”

 

The queen’s gaze is fierce, eyes flaming. “Never.”

 

“Then we’ll stay,” Gretel says, meeting the queen’s eyes and setting her jaw stubbornly.  

 

Hansel stares at her. “But, Gretel!” And she silences him with a glare. Hansel’s her brother. She loves him. She’d do anything for him.

 

He’s also an idiot.

 

The queen is not good at hiding her emotions, everything written plainly on her face, and the joy that spreads across her lips, in an insanity of teeth and blood-red lips, makes Gretel smile. This will be so easy. “Find them bed chambers,” the Queen commands, “and comfortable nightwear. We shall see about new clothing in the morning.” She plucks at the sleeve of Hansel’s shirt. “It certainly won’t do for my wards to be presented at court dressed like peasants.”

 

They are escorted by the queen’s own valet to adjoining bed chambers, lavishly decorated, and brought trays of fine foods and Hansel falls asleep soon after he’s eaten, his immediate concerns taken care of. Gretel removes his shoes and jacket and allows a guard to help her put Hansel to bed. Once dressed in a cotton shift – too big for her and Gretel suspects it was the queen’s once – she sneaks out from her room, following the path she still remembers because she’s a good tracker even if she couldn’t find Father, to the queen’s chambers. She finds the queen sitting on a chaise lounge, holding the apple Gretel had risked her life to get between thumb and forefinger, just staring.

 

She’s mad, Gretel thinks. Mad.

 

“Excuse me, your majesty,” she says, curtseying, though she meets the queen’s eye. She seems to like pluck and Gretel has that in abundance. “I came to wish you good night.” She glances at the Queen. “And to thank you.”

 

The queen stands, the strange parted skirts of her coat rustling as she moves forward, all sinuous grace and danger, and Gretel hates her so much it’s filling her whole body with black tar and bile. “Please, child,” she says. “Call me Regina. After all, I am to be your guardian.”

 

“Very well,” Gretel says. She pauses, feigning hesitancy. “Your ma–Regina, you have magic…”

 

“I am aware of that, child,” the queen – Regina – says, with a mocking laugh to her voice.

 

“Could you teach me?”

 

The queen kneels before her and her hand grasps Gretel’s chin, forcing her to meet her eyes. “Why do you wish to learn?” she asks.

 

“All my life I’ve been powerless,” Gretel says. “I do not want to be powerless anymore.”

 

The queen doesn’t blink for several long moments, dark eyes assessing Gretel, and for a moment she doesn’t seem mad, just desperately sad, eyes glistening with what might be tears. “No young woman should be powerless,” she says. “We shall begin tomorrow.” Gretel remembers the queen’s words ( _“You remind me of myself at your age”_ ) and wonders how she became this way.

 

She saw her once, when she was very young, when King Leopold was alive. They paraded through the village and Gretel thought she had never seen anyone so beautiful – nor so lonely. She sat in the carriage and smiled though her eyes were trapped and horrified and the king didn’t touch her or look at her. Father couldn’t keep his hands off Mother – because Mother had been alive then too – always finding excuses to touch her, a hand on her knee, a jostle at her side with his elbow, a kiss pressed to her temple…

 

She falls asleep that night and dreams of her father, of the choice she could have made, where she said ‘no’ and was still separated from him, wandering forever in an eternal forest with her brother.

 

Hansel is easily placated with toys and sword fighting lessons and lavish feasts and Gretel both envies and despises him. She watches the queen with him over the coming days and she’s fond, so fond, finding excuses to run her fingers through his hair or wrap an arm around him. It takes three days before Gretel enters Hansel’s chambers to find the queen reading him a story. It’s one of knights and glory and good vanquishing evil, the sort of story Gretel used to tell Hansel late at night when thunder rang outside and Hansel was afraid. “One day,” she says, “you will be one of my guard, dear one. You will marry a princess. You will have everything you desire.”

 

“And Gretel?” he asks.

 

“Gretel will wield a different sort of power,” the queen says and looks up to see Gretel staring at them. She holds out a hand, her arms encased in velvet. “Join us, child.”

 

Gretel has noticed that Hansel is ‘dear’ or ‘darling’ but Gretel is ‘child’. She wonders if this means something. The queen has set aside time each day for Gretel, to teach her magic. It mostly centres around Gretel focusing in on her emotions. “Magic is emotion,” the queen tells her constantly. “Find your anger.”

 

That morning Gretel had centred herself and wisps of smoke had formed from her palms. “Good,” the queen had said, stroking back a strand of Gretel’s golden hair in a gesture that would have been maternal if the hand hadn’t belonged to the evil queen. “What were you thinking of?”

 

 _You_ , Gretel had thought with such vehemence that she had suddenly feared the queen could read minds. “My father,” she said aloud.

 

The queen had sighed at this. “I think of Snow White,” she had said.

 

“The bandit?” Gretel had asked, with a sneer. She remembers Snow White from that long ago day; poised and pretty with a perfect smile and perfect dress and perfect tiara adorning her perfect curls. It isn’t all that difficult to feign hatred.

 

The queen had smiled, an almost real smile that just missed out on reaching her eyes. “Good girl,” she had said. “The bandit. She stole something from me that I will never get back.”

 

Gretel takes the queen’s hand as she took it that morning and sits beside her on the sofa, running her fingers through the queen’s dark hair, which falls loose and silky down her back. “It’s beautiful,” she says.

 

“You will be beautiful one day,” the queen replies and she raises a hand to cup Gretel’s cheek, her thumb stroking along her jaw. “You will be beautiful and your brother handsome and you shall strike fear and admiration in the hearts of all you meet.”

 

Gretel smiles. “Even you?”

 

The queen laughs. “Even me, child.”

 

 _Good_ , Gretel thinks.

 

*

 

Over the coming months she grows stronger, able to perform basic enchantments, although it takes constant practise, more time than she has available because the queen insists that she also learn to ride a horse and be educated in languages and politics and literature. “Knowledge is power too, child,” she says one afternoon when Gretel sighs over her language studies and then tests her in conjugating verbs of the language the queen’s ancestors spoke (though the queen never speaks it herself – even when her valet speaks it to her – and sometimes Gretel wonders if she is able).

 

The queen grimaces at her horrific pronunciation and Gretel feels guilty, repeating the conjugations again, taking greater care.

 

_Estoy, estás, está, estamos, estáis, están._

 

In order to practise her magic enough, she stays awake after the queen has kissed her good night and blown out her candle (and Gretel has grown proficient at smiling like Regina’s kiss is all she wants and sometimes she forgets that she’s only pretending and some nights she forgets her father). Then, she practises. She can re-light her candle now with magic, and conjure a weak fireball in her hands, but her strength is in stealth. She hopes one day to be able to become invisible. She dreams some nights of sneaking into the queen’s bedchambers, past the incompetent buffoons set to guard her, and slitting her throat with a dagger. She dreams of the blood pooling, dripping down her hands in rivers, and wakes herself screaming.

 

The queen has left them, searching for Snow White, and Hansel is with his fencing tutor. Gretel roams the palace. She’s making a map inside her mind of hidden passageways. It is when she’s strolling the balustrades that she sees the party return, the queen at the head dressed in red velvet and black leather, a manic grin carved into her features. Gretel ducks but not quickly enough and the queen sees her.

 

She runs back to her chambers and finds the queen already there, holding the empty sheets of parchment that should be an essay on trade negotiations during times of political upheaval in the Enchanted Forest. “Did your tutor not instruct you to complete this?” the queen asks, eyes narrowed.

 

“I’m sorry,” Gretel says and she scuffs the toe of her shoe against the bed post. “I got distracted.”

 

The queen sits on the edge of Gretel’s bed and pats the space beside her and when Gretel sits, she wraps an arm around her. “Your body is crackling with magic. It cannot be everything,” she says. “If you wish to rule you need a broader education.”

 

“I apologise,” Gretel says, clasping Regina’s hand in hers, and she feels the queen relax. “Was your trip successful?”

 

The queen sighs. “We caught a woman who had been hiding Snow White,” she says. “She is in the dungeons awaiting execution.” She tugs at Gretel’s braid. “Now, do your essay, terrible child.”

 

Gretel sighs but complies and later, when the castle is asleep, she sneaks out, down to the dungeons where she finds the woman sitting in a cell, facing the wall with her knees hunched up to her chest. “Who are you?” Gretel asks and the woman turns.

 

She has skin the colour of copper and lips that droop at the corners and there is a defiant set to her face that Gretel admires. “I didn’t tell _her_ my name. What makes you think I’d tell her little spy?”

 

Gretel shrugs. “I’m not her spy,” she says.

 

“If she finds out who I am, she will find my family,” the woman says. “I have a son. I’d rather die than let her near him. Do you know what she does to children?”

 

Gretel wants to laugh at that. She knows exactly what the queen does to children – if she finds them worthy. She adopts them. Some days Gretel wonders whether being a meal for a blind witch would have been an easier fate; she doesn’t know what to make of the queen’s maternal side and it only serves to confuse her. “I can’t let you go,” she says, and the woman nods. “I’m sorry.”

 

She leaves, though not before casting another glance at the woman, face sheathed in shadow. She thinks she might be praying and she wants to tell her there isn’t any point.

 

She never sees the woman again but the following week there is a new prisoner in the dungeons. Snow White’s Prince Charming. The queen has bought him off King George, to torture Snow White, and Gretel hides on the outskirts to watch. The queen sees her because she has not yet perfected her invisibility, acknowledging her with a nod, but does not send her away.

 

Snow White is fully grown now, still pretty and poised and perfect in the mirror. She has this voice that grates Gretel and she doesn’t have to pretend to dislike her. She’s cloying and irritable and Gretel is almost amused when the queen cuts through the romancing to say her piece. To offer Snow White parlay.

 

“Come, darling girl,” she says to Gretel when the mirror has been wiped blank. Gretel has become ‘darling’ now, though Hansel is still the treasured, spoiled prince. The queen finds him easier and, certainly, there’s a simplicity to Hansel’s wants and needs that mean Gretel can understand why she finds him comforting.

 

She watches the queen dress and it’s as though she is putting on a costume, becoming the evil queen. Gretel watches the maids pull her corset strings tight, help her step into the purple brocade dress with the high spiked collar. The queen’s eyes are winged in purple and her hair is high and dramatic and Gretel can’t help the sigh of, “you’re beautiful,” because it’s true. The queen might be mad but there is a beauty in her insanity and grief that Gretel is drawn to.

 

She disappears in a whirl of purple smoke and Gretel smiles and returns to practising her magic because she is so close to making herself invisible now, though when her concentration flags so too does the magic. The queen has promised to teach her potion making soon.

 

When the queen returns from the parlay she calls for musicians and whirls around the dining room with Hansel in her arms and pulls Gretel into a dance and the music is loud and frenetic and the room spins and Gretel feels almost joyful.

 

Before she remembers Father and the choice she has made.

 

But the queen is so _happy_ , her smile bright and warm and she orders cake. Gretel has never seen her eat cake, never seen her indulge in anything, but she does that night, a fleck of frosting at the corner of her mouth. “I love you both so much,” she says, pulling them to her and hugging them and Hansel kisses her cheek and Gretel does the same because it’s expected of her, not because of the warm glow in her heart she feels at being loved again – and not by Hansel who is so much a part of her that she views his love as an expectation, rather than a gift.

 

Hansel falls asleep almost immediately that night but Gretel lies awake and after several hours of tossing and turning she realises the queen has forgotten entirely about the prince in the dungeons and wonders if he has been set free as she promised.

 

She pads down the hall to the queen’s bedchambers and finds her, not ecstatic, but tearful. She’s wearing a cotton nightgown and her hair is loose around her and she looks so young that Gretel is rather scared of her. “Regina?” she asks. “Are you well?”

 

The queen looks around and her eyes are red with tears and she holds a ring clutched in her fist. “Darling girl,” she says. “Come here.” So Gretel goes to her and lets her hold her while she sobs into Gretel’s nightgown, whispering to someone called ‘Daniel’ and all Gretel can think is it would be so easy to kill the queen now, like this.

 

But she doesn’t. And the queen sobs into Gretel’s ear, “you may marry anyone you choose, my darling girl. Marry the stable boy. Marry the maid who lights your fires. Marry no one at all.”

 

*

 

Snow White doesn’t die, saved from eternal slumber by true love’s kiss, and the queen is busy over the coming months, preparing for battle, aligning herself with Kings George and Midas to keep the kingdom secured, returning from war councils to take long, exhausted baths and scrub at her skin with sharp bristled brushes.

 

Snow gives up the throne and then she doesn’t and Gretel can’t be having with this back and forth. Set a goal and fight for it. The woolly, traitorous voice in the back of her mind whispers, _and how’s killing the queen going for you?_

 

There are the battles too numerous to keep track, the queen defending her throne, Snow staking her claim, and both sides are as bad as each other and Gretel sometimes wonders if their world would be better off without Kings and Queens, without these people who think they deserve to rule, to subjugate, to control. She knows there are revolutionaries who speak of power to the people and rights (Father used to attend their meetings, sometimes) but it hasn’t been until now – having used the education the queen granted her – that she begins to agree with them.

 

A guard brings news of the queen’s defeat and the enchanted mirror shows Gretel the execution through the mottled sheen of a shield. The queen stands, tied to a post, and she speaks. She’s dressed in scratchy grey, her face free of make-up, her hair loose and rough, and she looks nothing like the terrible queen Gretel hates and loves in equal measure – instead soft, weak, and pitiable. “I know I'm being judged for my past,” she says, when she is asked if she has any last words by a Snow White who seems desperate to pardon her. “A past where I have caused pain. A past where I've inflicted misery. A past where I've even brought death. When I look back at everything that I've done, I want you all to know what I feel. And that is regret.”

 

And then there’s a barely imperceptible shift in her tone, in the interplay of muscles in her jaw. “Regret that I was not able to cause  _more_  pain, inflict  _more_  misery and bring about  _more_  death. And above all else, with every ounce of my being, I regret that I was  _not_  able to kill Snow White.”

 

Snow stays the execution when the arrows are inches from the queen’s body and the queen sneers as she walks past, a smirk that makes Gretel wonder if this is it, the queen’s final descent into madness, but then the image fades.

 

She is returned home later, carried in from a carriage by faithful guards, the ever-loyal valet trotting along at their heels. Gretel scurries to the queen’s chambers, calls for servants to ready a bath. She sends Hansel to bed and helps the queen out of the grey shift as she sits on the edge of the bed, tries not to notice the burn marks of rope around her wrists and ankles, the sharp indents of her ribs below her breasts that speak to weeks of poor nutrition, lest she feel bad for her.

 

She throws the shift into the fire where the fabric twists and melts in orange flame.

 

The queen places a hand on Gretel’s shoulder to walk to the bath and she’s no longer the queen, but Regina, worn-down, broken, exhausted. She sinks into the bath up to her shoulders but her hands remain wrapped around her knees. She makes herself small.

 

“It’s over,” she says. “I cannot harm them.”

 

“I’m sorry,” Gretel says, running a comb through the tangle of dark hair. She has learned that Regina’s soft, silky hair is not naturally like that. Instead, it’s thick and it curls and it feels coarse beneath Gretel’s fingers. She wets it with a bowl of warm water and cleans it with a potion Regina uses to make it silky to the touch, massaging her scalp as she does so.

 

“So am I,” Regina says. “Still, we can be content. You and me and Hansel.”

 

Words stick in Gretel’s throat but she doesn’t think that Regina notices her silence. Later, she watches the queen’s chest rise and fall as she lies on her bed in a simple cotton shift, her hair braided back, her lashes long against her cheeks.

 

“It is so hard to hate you,” she says. The words spoken softly in the empty chamber echo and she shivers.

 

The queen sighs in a rattling breath. She’s been here too long. She makes herself invisible and returns to her own chambers where she does not sleep, instead practising, always practising her magic.

 

The queen’s calm and resignation doesn’t last. A week of false cheer passes – picnics in the extensive grounds, riding lessons overseen by the queen herself, gifts and trinkets, feasts of summer fruits and delicate frozen desserts, spicy hot chocolate drinks when day turns to night and the temperature drops – and Hansel smiles at Gretel. “Maybe she’ll be like this for good now,” he says. “Maybe we’ll have a real mother.” And Gretel frowns.

 

They have a week of _Regina_ and Gretel wonders if maybe forgiveness is a possibility.

 

But then the imp appears again and Gretel fades into the shadows and is not noticed (she is never noticed and she is glad because she has seen what the imp does to the queen and she doesn’t want his attentions; the queen may be evil but at least she wants Gretel to be powerful). The imp tells her of a wedding and a curse that will destroy all happy endings but her own. He whispers treasures into the queen’s ears and she cannot help but clamour greedily for more.

 

Gretel, too, finds herself almost drawn from the shadows. If she had the curse… She brushes the thought aside before it can form completely, but it keeps nagging, unbidden, in her mind. The imp’s golden eyes scan the corner where Gretel stands, hidden, and for a moment she is convinced they lock eyes.

 

The next morning Gretel is called to watch the queen dress.

 

“How do I look?” she asks, behaving for all the world like a little girl going to her first ball, giddy with gnarled excitement, as she twirls in her version of a ball gown – black leather trousers clinging to thighs, hair like a whip when she moves, madness in her eyes.

 

“Perfect,” Gretel says, and her eye is drawn to the rise and fall of the queen’s breasts above the corset, to the plump red of her lips.

 

She returns late in the night and comes to Gretel’s room, sitting at the edge of her bed and waking her. Gretel sits up (she had been dreaming of Father, of him spinning with Hansel on his shoulders while Gretel watched and clapped) and notices the tails of the coat are spreading across her like a second blanket. “Were you successful?”

 

“Very,” the queen says, lighting a candle and staring into its flame. She clutches a scroll of parchment in one hand and Gretel’s hand twitches, barely holding back her desire to grab it, read it, and perhaps even use it. “I had to steal this from a friend of mine,” she adds.

 

“A friend?” Gretel asks, barely stopping herself from expressing surprise that the queen has friends at all.

 

“Maleficent,” the queen says. The fingers of her left hand flick through the flame of the candle.

 

Gretel remembers her, though she has never met her. She came to the queen’s chambers one night, practising her invisibility spell. The doors to were ajar, the room bathed in a red glow, and Gretel saw the queen, naked and spread, on her bed, a woman with wild, golden curls kneeling between her thighs. Gretel had run when the queen had gasped out the name, “Maleficent!” the word high and vibrating on her tongue.

 

“Is she a sorceress?” Gretel asks. “Like you?”

 

“She has gone soft,” the queen says. “She used to be a dragon.” She sighs. “I should let you sleep, darling girl. The curse will save us. We can be happy always while the world burns.”

 

But Gretel wonders if the queen is too far gone in grief and rage to be happy anywhere. She wonders why she cares anyway, when she plans to kill the queen.

 

 _You’ve been planning for a long time_ , that traitorous part of her mind whispers.

 

*

 

The imp may not notice her. Maleficent may not have noticed her. But the pirate does.

 

“You gone soft, love?” he asks the queen, who has Gretel at her side and the pirate’s hook in her hand, thumb rubbing along the smooth, shiny steel. Her other hand grips Gretel’s shoulder.

 

“My daughter is anything but soft,” the queen replies, proud, and Gretel struggles to remain calm under her hand. Daughter? The queen has never called her daughter before and it disturbs Gretel – not because she doesn’t want it, but because she does.

 

_You’re never going to kill her, are you?_

 

Gretel sits with the queen in her chambers. “Who has he gone to recover?” Gretel asks, curiosity winning out.

 

The queen is silent for a time. “My mother,” she says and she wraps her arms tightly around herself, brow furrowing and breathing in a deep, frustrated sigh. The purple fabric of her dress shifts and falls taut against her body and Gretel reaches out a hand to run her fingers along the golden cuffs. “I hoped I would never have to see her again.”

 

Gretel had loved her mother, loved the clean smell of her soap and how her golden hair coiled in a tight braid around her head and the way she stroked Gretel’s back when she was sick or sad. She had loved her and she had been inconsolable when she had died, in childbirth, taking Gretel and Hansel’s baby sister with her. “I’m sorry,” she says.

 

“Never mind,” the queen says and smiles, her grin large and fake and heart-breaking. “I have you and Hansel to keep me strong.”

 

“Your valet said that Snow White is pregnant,” Gretel says and the queen snarls, one hand resting on her stomach. She knows enough about the world to know how babies are made and to wonder how a young woman married to a demanding king (because Leopold had always been described as a just and fair ruler but Gretel remembers her father pinching pennies to pay taxes too steep for him to manage long before the queen took the throne) for ten years managed to remain childless.

 

“Snow White has everything,” she says. “But she won’t once I’m through.” The queen has told her enough about the curse to pique Gretel’s curiosity and she researched it (“knowledge is power too, child,” she remembers the queen saying) and it tugs at her, taunting her, tantalising her.

 

 _If you cast the curse you wouldn’t have to_ kill _the queen. The curse would take care of her punishment for you._

 

When the pirate returns, Gretel is sent to her rooms but she follows the queen, now dressed in black and feathers and a headdress that carves into her forehead. She carries a single red rose. The pirate is dismissed but the queen, as ever, overlooks Gretel, cloaked in invisibility, and so Gretel hears everything, though she only sees the curve of the queen’s back as she leans over the stone coffin.

 

“I'm sorry, Mother. Without you, I never would have become the person I am now. But I had no choice. I had to do this.” Her voice is hoarse and sonorous. “After you killed Daniel, you told me something I've never forgotten. Love is weakness. Well, Mother, you are my weakness. Because I love you.” She places the rose on her mother’s body and sweeps out, Gretel following behind her, slipping through the door before it shuts.

 

She sees the queen bury her head in the chest of her valet, her sobs echoing through the corridor.

 

Gretel’s own heart aches and she hardly knows why.

 

It is that night that the queen sacrifices her horse, Rocinante, to cast the curse and rages when it doesn’t work, spitting out _his_ name – that strange, foreign word that Gretel has never said lest he realise she exists – as though it’s a swear word. Gretel sits still and invisible in the corner, one finger sliding down the blade of a knife.

 

“The heart of the thing I love the most,” she mutters and her face falls, shooting a sharp glance over at the valet, who stands by the door, the lace frills at his throat shaking. Gretel must act quickly. The queen keeps a sleeping curse – not as potent as that which Snow White took, but enough – on her dresser, in a glass bottle, the stopper sharp as a spindle. She barely feels the prick, turning. “Darling girl,” she says, before falling to stone floor, her eyes drooping shut.

 

Gretel smiles. _Finally_.

 

She turns to leave and sees it at her feet. The scroll. She picks it up and unfurls it.

 

She instructs the valet – whose hands shake and whose eyes brim with tears – to call for Hansel. _If you do this you’ll be as bad as her_ , her mind shouts and she squeezes her eyes shut for a moment because she’ll never be as bad as _her._ Never.

 

And yet the lure of a happy ending and destruction of the queen in one fell swoop…

 

“He won’t work,” says a voice in her ear and she recognises that high pitched giggle.

 

“You’re supposed to be trapped,” Gretel says, voice even. She does not turn. She has seen the imp enough times. She does not need to meet those glittering, reptile eyes, see the twisted grin on his scaly face.

 

The imp cackles again. “Can’t capture the dark one, dearie. And your dear, sweet brother won’t do at all.”

 

Gretel frowns. “He is the person I love the most.” Hansel is so easy to love, his needs so simple, his heart so open, and her own heart breaks for him.

 

The imp’s foot stretches out and his booted toe nudges the queen’s body, splayed on the stone floor. “Kiss her and wake her,” he says and it’s a compulsion. Gretel kisses the queen, soft, on the lips, and she wakes, eyes fluttering open.

 

She barely has time for an exclamation of horror when Gretel is plunging her hand into the queen’s chest and tearing out her heart. She’s never done this kind of magic before but she’s watched it happen from the shadows plenty of times. It’s so _easy_ even though the queen screams as her heart is wrenched from her body.

 

“Gretel,” Regina says, her eyes raw and aching and Gretel tastes salt, kisses her queen’s forehead, and squeezes.

 

A grey mist envelops the land.


End file.
